[Rd] mysteriously persistent generic definition

Duncan Murdoch murdoch at stats.uwo.ca
Wed Oct 28 20:31:44 CET 2009


On 10/28/2009 3:14 PM, Ross Boylan wrote:
> Here's a self-contained example of the problem:
> 
>> foo <- function(obj) {return(3);}
>> setGeneric("foo")
> [1] "foo"
>> removeGeneric("foo")
> [1] TRUE
>> foo <- function(x) {return(4);}
>> args(foo)
> function (x) 
> NULL
>> setGeneric("foo")
> [1] "foo"
>> args(foo)
> function (obj) 
> NULL
> 
> R 2.7.1.  I get the same behavior whether or not I use ESS.
> 
> The reason this is more than a theoretical problem:
> 
>> setMethod("foo", signature(x="numeric"), function(x) {return(x+4);})
> Error in match.call(fun, fcall) : unused argument(s) (x = "numeric")

We just released 2.10.0.  It doesn't have this problem, nor does 2.9.2, 
or 2.8.1.  I think you'll just have to upgrade.

Duncan Murdoch



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